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bca Regional Meetings 2011

bca Regional Meetings 2011 – round-up

Following the regional bca meetings in Manchester, Birmingham and Central London, several core issues between office providers and the broker community were identified that repeatedly cropped up during the three meetings.

One particular issue was the updating of leads. When a new lead is sent out and supplementary information becomes available after the lead has been sent, some brokers simply re-submit the lead again, rather than sending a quick update.

Re-submitting leads is an annoying practice – and something that officebroker.com is not guilty of – but due to concerns raised by office providers who said that the re-sending of leads is frustrating and a waste of time, officebroker.com raised the matter during a meeting of broker representatives directly before the bca regional meeting in Central London.

We are happy to say that following this meeting, the other brokers have agreed to follow our lead and provide direct updates rather than simply re-submit leads if or when additional client information becomes available.

A number of other points and issues were raised during the meeting, as summarised below:

Unqualified leads – sending out leads without sufficient knowledge of the client and their requirements. The only time that these leads would be sent out by officebroker.com is on weekends or outside of normal office hours, when our consultants are unable to pre-qualify the information received. We always state clearly if a lead is unqualified or if we have been unable to gain sufficient information from the client.

Centre visits – brokers arranging visits to the centres they are responsible for. At officebroker.com we are currently organising visits for all of our Sales staff over the coming months – please email Visits@officebroker.com to take part.

Product knowledge – keeping building profiles up-to-date and informing Account Managers of updates. We have a dedicated Marketing team who handle building profiles and keep information up-to-date – contact Marketing@officebroker.com to make changes or add new photos of your building.

‘Blind Booking’ and ‘No-show’ office tours – this is the practive of booking clients onto a tour before the Account Manager has spoken to them, in order to take advantage of the overturn policy. This is against officebroker.com policy and would result in disciplinary action if any of our team were found to be doing this.

Enquiries for incorrect areas – sometimes enquiries are fed through that are outside of your area. Some providers are happy for us to send leads for surrounding areas on the off-chance that they can convert the client, but others are only interested in specific locations. You can contact us to ‘opt out’ of receiving leads of nearby areas if you wish.

To explain these points in more detail and to outline our standpoint on any related issues, we have created an article which addresses each of the concerns listed above:

It also outlines what to do if you experience any of these issues when working with a member of the officebroker.com team, ensuring we do not hinder your business, but continue to be viewed as a value-adding resource.

We view the relationship between officebroker.com and the office providers we work alongside very much as a partnership, and we are committed to ensuring that we continue to build on these relationships and work towards common goals for our respective businesses, and our industry.

For further information, please donΓÇÖt hesitate to get in touch by calling Chris Meredith (Head of UK Sales) or Chris Mapp (Sales Manager) on 0800 111 6 444 to discuss these issues further.